Talk:Ball lightning

An Observation dated 2014 April 21th, Easter Monday 2014

My parents watched in their home the development of what appeared to be an impressive thundercloud. There was no rain yet. My father watched in the direction of the could at the back of the house, my mother watched through a windows in the front of the house in the opposite direction. My mother then saw a ball of orange roll through the street, an estimated one meter in diameter. She described its texture and colour like the sun's granulated surface, as "shown" in fake-colour images. As my mother stood perplexed and the ball rolled out of view my father ducked for cover. He saw an "enormous" orange sphere envelope a forested cemetery, at about one kilometer distance. It took several seconds for the sound of the strike to reach their home.

It is unclear what happened first: the lightning strike at the cemetery or the ball in the street. The distance between the lightning ball and the site of the strike is about one kilometer.

No damage in the street was recorded due to the ball lightning. But the cemetery was devastated by the strike. An oak of about 20 meters was reduced to shreds of wood. The mourning center's back wall, double brick masonry 10 meters long and 3 meters tall, was obliterated and rubble was blown inward. Marble tomb stones got shattered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxAVeI7aF-4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.83.108.100 (talk) 10:33, 15 August 2022

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Proposed refinement of lead wording regarding existence status

I’d like to raise a concern about the current lead wording of the article, specifically the phrasing that describes ball lightning as “a rare and unexplained phenomenon described as luminescent spherical objects…” While this reflects common descriptive language in the literature, the phrasing may unintentionally imply that “ball lightning” is a well-established physical phenomenon with confirmed existence as a distinct entity. Most high-quality sources (e.g., review literature in atmospheric physics) characterize ball lightning as a reported or hypothesized phenomenon associated with thunderstorms, with no universally accepted mechanism or confirmed reproducible observation. There is ongoing debate about whether reports represent a single phenomenon or multiple unrelated phenomena grouped under a historical label. Given this, I suggest considering whether the lead should more explicitly attribute the description to reports and literature, for example: “Ball lightning is a term used in reports and scientific literature to describe a rare, unexplained luminous phenomenon associated with thunderstorms…” This would better reflect the epistemic status of the subject (i.e., that it is a reported phenomenon without confirmed unified physical explanation), in line with Wikipedia’s requirement for careful attribution and avoidance of implying established existence where scientific consensus is still uncertain. I am not suggesting removal of the article content, only clarification of wording to better reflect source-based uncertainty. ~2026-26009-41 (talk) 00:19, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Vaporized Silicon Hypothesis

To the 11 year old (@User:118 smarty) who posted their thoughts here, which were coldly deleted by another editor without response - you showed tremendous insight and should be encouraged to continue your exploration of the topic. You mentioned the "Vaporized Silicon" concept, that is briefly mentioned in the article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning#Vaporized_silicon_hypothesis though it could certainly be expanded on with further sources.

Inclusion of additional information in the article is dependent on it being linked to a reliable source (such as an established publication rather than a discussion forum), as well as being notable (significant and relevant) enough to include. The process can be daunting, and subject to a fair amount of back-and-forth and sometimes overly reactive gatekeepers (see previous deletion), but please know that the positive side of these things is that the result is more reliable as a result, thanks to community effort.

That might be something you choose to participate in or not (if so, perhaps other editors could point you to further Wikipedia policies as a starting point), but the process of researching and defending ideas is something you will experience elsewhere as you continue to follow your passion for science, and that's a positive thing. Please don't be discouraged here - keep seeking out new ideas.

Thanks to your comment, I, for one (a 50-something-year-old adult), am now taking the idea of Vaporized Silicon more seriously as it relates to ball lightning. Keeping sciencing the heck out of it, kid. —Op\Shada\nG (talk | contribs) 14:51, 2 July 2026 (UTC)